Nature’s Enlightenment:
Environment, Empire, and Natural History in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
April 22, 2013
Natural history and the environment have become increasingly important themes for a new generation of scholars in eighteenth-century Scottish studies.
This symposium at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh and at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh surveys the state of the field.
There will be papers on naturalist networks, Carl Linnaeus, colonial agriculture, race and primitivism, and the origins of environmentalism by Sarah Easterby-Smith, Matthew Daniel Eddy, Linda Andersson Burnett and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson. There will then be an afternoon demonstration of eighteenth-century botanical artefacts by Henry Noltie in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Schedule
9-9.30: Coffee/introductions at IASH, 2 Hope Park Square.
9.30-10.30: Prof Fredrik Albritton Jonsson (The University of Chicago), ‘The End of Cornucopia: the Highlands and the Stationary State’.
Dr Linda Andersson Burnett (IASH, The University of Edinburgh), ‘A Natural History of Man: Carl Linnaeus and Eighteenth-Century Ethnography’.
10.30-10.50: Tea break.
10.50-11.50: Dr Sarah Easterby-Smith (University of St Andrews), ‘Cultivating Commerce: Botany and British consumer culture in the late eighteenth century’.
Dr Matthew Daniel Eddy (Durham University), ‘The Devil’s Dye: Environmental Knowledge on a Colonial Plantation’.
11.50-13.00: Roundtable discussion.
13.00-14.00: Lunch at IASH.
14.50- c.16.00: Afternoon excursion to the Royal Botanic Garden. Dr Henry J. Noltie will provide a demonstration of artefacts, including botanical illustrations, teaching diagrams, herbarium specimens and books, which belonged to or were commissioned by the Scottish Enlightenment botanist John Hope (1725-1786). There will also be a walk to the garden’s monument to Carl Linnaeus which was erected by Hope and designed by Robert Adam. Please note that we will meet at the reception desk of the Herbarium at the Botanic Garden, which is located at 20A Inverleith Row. Inverleith Row can be reached by Lothian Buses 8, 23 and 27.
The event is free but places are limited so registration is essential. Please email Linda Andersson Burnett, [log in to unmask], to book a place.
Dr Matthew D Eddy
Durham University, Department of Philosophy, 50/51 Old Elvet, Durham, DH1 3HN, United Kingdom. http://www.dur.ac.uk/m.d.eddy/ http://durham.academia.edu/MatthewEddy
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